creative process

Aisha Salem such a profound woman. I listened to her talk again on Buddha at the Gas Pump with Rick Archer last night and I managed to reach a new level of understanding of what she is pointing to. She can sound like a madwoman if one has not attempted to reach the depths of exploration of where she goes. Last night she made so much sense to me.

Prior to god is the void

the void is beyond self realisation

passing into the darkness

meeting with nothing

the revelation of the primordial

silence…

doesn’t leave an experiencer

nothing not nothingness

disappearing beyond existence

letting go beyond existence and life will (hopefully) reappear again

The void is the blackness between the cells – the black light in the body

“Burn god in the backyard”, she rallied

She is so radical – I love the depths to which she uncompromisingly goes and then reports back from these almost unknowable, unfathomable places in her direct way.

She only deals with students who are 100 percent committed to allowing her to annihilate them.

Not sure if i am ready

I still cling onto the creative process – it holds so much depth and fascination for me – it might be a slower path than radical head cutting by Aisha – but its the path for me and right now I feel at the peak of my creative powers, its just all pouring out and everything I have ever wanted to express is flowing out freely and easily, can’t stop now…

My realisation last night was that if I totally surrender – there is no need for accidents. Accidents are a way for totality to burst in through conscious control. Take away the conscious control and “accidents” happen all the time in a continuous flow. Creativity then becomes effortless as there is nothing to hold onto, only a letting go…

Aisha, bless her profound soul, talked about Chinnamasta – a Hindu goddess very few people know about. She is my favourite. Chinnamasta goes beyond Kali. Kali cuts other people’s heads off (the head symbolising ego) but Chinnamasta cuts off her own head.

Here is my version of Chinnamasta from a series I created called DarkLight.

A friend studying psychology asked me to write ten sentences in diary form for her to do a text analysis on.

I found that I really enjoyed writing the text, I wrote about my creative process. I am in the thick middle of an intense creative process preparing for a solo show that has to fill an enormous wonderful space of 22m long by 8m wide at Grande Provence.

That bit of writing made me think, why not write further about your creative process, in fact why not write a daily ten sentences. And so this thread on my blog was begun, by serendipity at first and now continuing by choice.

Modern technology is just incredibly fabulous in the instant way it allows one to do this and have the possible whole world as an audience. Before I would have felt nervous about exposing myself. These days in my fifties, my attitude is what do I have to loose? I might bore a few people, but i will have a wonderful record of creative exploration as it was taking day by day.

My friend analysed my text Transcend-dent and this is the text analysis result

I have done a content analysis of your text. The results of KALI’S WORLD are: is…1. On an Events level, prominent events are of an INTRAPERSONAL nature, ie matters concerning you the individual and your thoughts and feelings; 2 on a Regulation Processing Level, you regulate intrapersonal matters with PHILOSOPHICAL regulation, ie abstract ideas the truth of which can not be fully determined; and 3 your Mind Process level is COGNITIVE, Ie you mind process is through perception and thought predominantly. So basically it means in your world according to that text, events are intrapersonal and processed through philosophical perceptions and thoughts.

Or put another way, you regulate your intrapersonal events by abstract ideas, the truth of which can’t be proven, and you do this cognitively through perception and thought.

I always did enjoy philosophy and do treat my creativity as a tangible, visible philosophical exploration. But I am through with belief or expounding heady, abstract thoughts. Buddhism makes a lot of sense to me in the way it asks you to test its premises and teachings through your own sensate experience.